After four weeks of the US-Israeli war on Iran, the conflict dynamics have become ever more complex. While none of the three main actors has achieved their aims, Iran has undoubtedly come closest, despite the gigantic clouds of hubris that have characterised Trumpian political output so far.
Ordinary Iranians have suffered appallingly – with towns and cities damaged, thousands killed and injured, food shortages and rigorous control of dissent – but there is little sign of leadership collapse. The heads of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will now be quietly confident in regime survival; those assassinated have been replaced, and the state remains functional.
For Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu, the unexpected challenge in defeating Tehran is exposing an uncomfortable new reality: the global economic balance of power is shifting away from the North Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific.
Across the board, the IRGC’s decades of preparations have so far worked well against the immense combined military force of Israel and the US. Analysis suggests that most of Iran’s 200 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium-235 survived last year’s US attack and may be hidden in bunkers at Isfahan and at Pickaxe Mountain near Fordow. These hugely valuable stocks are close enough to “weapons-grade” enrichment, and are reportedly too deep to be destroyed by bunker-busting bombs – instead requiring very risky ground assaults.
The Pentagon is already said to be moving weapons and personnel suited to this task towards the warzone, including 2,000 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division trained “to parachute into hostile or contested territory to secure key territory and airfields”, but the IRGC has likely widely dispersed its stockpile to mitigate this risk.
Similarly, Tehran has long prepared for a confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, including amassing a fleet of more than 1,000 fast attack craft, thousands of mines, numerous shore-based anti-ship missiles able to range widely over the Gulf, swarms of drones to saturate anti-missile defences and crewless armed subsurface craft.
The IRGC remains in control and able to fire the ballistic and cruise missiles and armed drones it has aimed variously at Israel and other nearby states in the region. Even if barely one in 20 gets through, that would be enough, symbolism being so important. Take last weekend’s Iranian attack on the Israeli city of Dimona, just five miles from the symbolically important and closely protected Shimon Perez Nuclear Research Centre, the heart of Israel’s own nuclear weapons research and development programme.
To complicate matters further for the US and Israel, Tehran is in the process of acquiring stocks of the Chinese anti-ship missiles that Beijing claims are the most effective weapon of its kind, the 180-mile-range surface-hugging CM-302. China knows all too well that the missile’s use in a successful Iranian attack on a US Navy destroyer, cruiser or even an aircraft carrier would transform its export potential for at least a decade.
If its survival becomes seriously threatened, Iran could force the long-term closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the destruction of desalination plants and the termination of oil and gas output in the region. Ask why they are hitting otherwise friendly states, and the IRGC will have a ready reply: ‘friendly’ can no longer mean allying in any way with the Americans. It will view the choice as between Muslim Iran and the bully in Washington with its Zionist ally.
That analysis may seem over the top, but anything less is dangerously missing the point.
The US and Israel have got it badly wrong, particularly as the Israeli Defence Force is also struggling on its “second front” in southern Lebanon, where it hoped to occupy and then depopulate the area to terminate Hezbollah as a functioning paramilitary movement. Hezbollah’s vigorous resistance may be one reason for the IDF’s controversial use of white phosphorus artillery shells, and also its practice of flattening entire villages with bulldozers.
Trying to understand what is likely to happen next is hugely complicated, but as I said last week, by far the most sensible action Trump can now take is to declare victory and withdraw, get his forces out of the way as quickly as possible and warn Netanyahu not to make trouble.
Will the US president do so? Highly unlikely, except for just one factor that most analysts are missing. He might be forced to.
The oil-rich Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, are immensely wealthy. In terms of sovereign wealth funds alone, we are talking about over $4trn, and there are many other investment strengths to play with. Add a friendly China, and you get nearly twice that.
How that plays out in terms of withdrawal of investments and other multiple private pressures on Washington and Wall Street is not clear, but a new reality is unfolding. The US may still be the world’s leading military power, at least for now – but in this crisis, that’s less relevant than ever.
